Sunday 28 July 2013

Gaming at Ultra HD and beyond

4K Ultra HD is the next generation high-resolution display standard poised to replace 1080p Full HD. What could be like to be able to game at 4K Ultra HD and beyond?
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Technically speaking, 4K represents the display resolution of 4096 × 2160. The general public sometimes refer to 4K as the collection of display size with horizontal resolution of about 4000 pixels. Ultra HD, on the other hand, is a new television standard with a resolution of 3840 x 2160, which is exactly four times the resolution of current the 1080p display. With the help of AMD, Microsoft put together 3 Ultra HD Sharp PN-K321 in Eyefinity 3×1 configuration powered by a ASUS Direct CU II 7970 to demonstrate Ultra HD gaming.
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To showcase the awesomeness, Dirt 3 was chosen for the wide panaromic effect. A single ASUS Direct CU II 7970 graphics card is enough to push a 35 FPS at 11520 x 2160 on medium high overall settings with Multi Sampling Anti-aliasing (MSAA) turned off. Although Dirt 3 is not a particularly demanding game, this goes to show that the power of current generation GPUs are far beyond the mainstream 1080p resolution.
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Due to the limitation of bandwidth, one display port can push out 4K resolution at 30 Hz. To sweeten the deal, 60 Hz is made possible by using a MST hub to create virtual displays through multiple display port connections. To achieve 11520 x 2160 at 60 Hz, 6 virtual 4K displays are linked into an Eyefinity group. With three 7970s in crossfire and a custom version of driver from AMD, Microsoft was able to achieve 62-67 average FPS in Dirt 3 with all settings on “high” except shadow detail and particles. Microsoft did not indicate the MSAA setting but it is assumed to be turned off.
This video shows Ultra HD gaming in action.
The price of the three displays alone is a whopping non mainstream $15,000. However, when the industry start adopting 4K as a standard, prices of monitors are bound to come down. 4K gaming is certainly not a far-fetched dream.
Source: Microsoft Blog

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